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Details
Lansdowne Crescent Methodist Church
Lansdowne Crescent
Malvern
Worcestershire
WR14 2AW
England
Programme
Bob Chilcott – Aesop's Fables
Eric Whitacre – Animal Crackers
Performers
Piers Maxim – Musical Director
tim sidford – Accompanist
Elgar Chorale
Programme Note
The Elgar Chorale of Worcester return to Malvern in March at Lansdowne Methodist Church for their major Spring concert of the season presenting musical settings from stories and poems of animals and nature: it promises to be an evening of fun music from a variety of composers.
Almost everyone has heard of ‘Aesop’s Fables’. Aesop, allegedly a slave in Ancient Greece during the sixth century BC, wrote over six hundred of these little stories with a moral, which often involve animals. Bob Chilcott, formerly of The King’s Singers and now an acclaimed composer in his own right, has chosen to set five of the best known fables for choir and piano. We see in these witty, jazz-inspired pieces the bouncy and overconfident hare setting off brightly but then going to sleep; the mountain straining over nothing; the petulant little fox and her sour grapes; the battle between the north wind and the sun, with the women and men in the choir pointing up the conflict; and finally the tribute to music itself when the swan, mistakenly caught for the table instead of the goose, eventually sings to save his life.
The programme also features Eric Whitacre’s ‘Animal Crackers’. These pieces are pure musical fun! The ‘ridiculous’ poems by another American, Ogden Nash, a comic master of the unexpected rhyme, are quirky and very short; from them Whitacre sets these equally hilarious animal songs.
Other featured composers include Elgar, Stanford, Vaughan Williams, Gibbons and more.
“Animal Crackers” takes place on Saturday 25th March at 7.30pm at Lansdowne Methodist Church, Great Malvern. Tickets £18(concessions £15) from Malvern Tourist information Centre (01684 892289) or online at www.elgarchorale.com or at the door.
